It took them a bit of discussion to decide which city they would seek out. The argument boiled down to whether they should go to a smaller city or the largest one possible. Apexus, wanting to have a semblance of knowing what was going on, insisted on the former. He had found Heralry confusing and he had merely looked at that city from a distance. Learning that the ones around were even larger only convinced him that they could get ambushed from just about everywhere if things went wrong.

Aclysia, on the other hand, argued that they were much safer in large, shifting crowds. The more people there were, the less they would stand out. Since the biggest city on the Leaf, of those they had seen so far anyway, had been the one at the Stem, chances were that it was a hodgepodge of different races.

In the end, Reysha had weighed in and said she would be much more comfortable in a smaller city. That was the end of that discussion, Aclysia accepting she was outvoted. Not that she was particularly happy about it, but the guardian angel wasn’t one to dwell on these things.

Apexus went up into the air and looked for the closest city. He didn’t have to search for long. The local elves were in the habit of marking their cities through large, turquoise spires. Sitting atop the building at the city’s centre, they usually marked where the local outpost of the Trader’s Guild went about their business. Alternatively, they were on top of the mayor’s house. Either way, a landmark was a landmark and the trio got moving.

It took them a day to arrive in the city, but they had it timed well enough that they got there during the busiest hours of the day. People from the surrounding villages rolled their carts, often by hand, sometimes drawn by oxen or horses, down the roads. It was a market day, happening twice a week around these parts, and so the group was surrounded on all sides by people.

They were predominantly wood elves, with a fair dash of humans and people that had the features of deer. In a particularly unique showing, there was a group of people that had elven torsos sticking out of the lower bodies of deer. The dryads partook without anyone minding. It was to little surprise, then, that the trio also didn’t get a lot of attention.

Not that this put Apexus at any more ease. The slime felt like he was prey that had jumped face first into an acid bath and was now trying to take a casual swim in it. Every step he took was accompanied with at least two turns of his head. The squeaking of the wheels, the laughing of groups, mumbled words and gestures in their general direction, they were all noises that had his feathers puff up and his wings spread slightly, ready to take off at a moment’s notice.

Gently, Aclysia put a hand on his shoulder. “You need to calm down, darling,” she whispered. “The more agitated you look, the more we stand out.”

“I’ll try,” the chimeric creature answered and consciously pulled his wings back. He stopped looking at everything that caught his attention, forcefully kept his neck stiff. Murmured words, spoken from unknown lips in accents and sometimes tongues he didn’t know, continued to keep him on his toes, however. No matter how much he tried to relax, he just couldn’t.

He heard a sharp sound, metal on metal, and jumped. In the middle of the street, he assumed a fighting pose, arms raised and knees bent, the wings raised in a shield-like fashion. People hastily stepped back from him, unsure what was going on.

The smith looked up from his work with two raised eyebrows. “Something the matter?” the human asked with two raised eyebrows.

“No… no… I apologize,” Apexus said and slowly backed away. Largely because Aclysia was pulling on his sleeve. The trio moved into an alleyway to have a quick talk in relative privacy.

“We don’t need the attention!” she berated him in a hissed whisper, a tone much misplaced from her usual calm demeanour. “That smith could remember us, whoever tracks us could happen to ask him and then they have a lead.”

“I’m sorry,” Apexus answered, looking twice over his shoulder before continuing. “There’s so much that could hunt us here, it puts me on edge.”

“Those people mean no harm, we just need to pass them by.”

“Do you know that?” Apexus asked and tilted his head. He was genuinely curious. “We have been wrong before.”

That shut Aclysia up for the moment and a desperate expression crossed. A loud caw echoed in the hallways and Apexus felt his wings grind against the stone of the nearby walls. The alley was much too narrow to encompass the sheer span of his wings. Before he managed to pull himself together again, he saw the source of his worries. A crow, simply sitting on top of a nearby roof, cawing at some of its kin.

Apexus felt the magic from his core pulse through his liquid body. Intense beats that ate away at his energy reserves but kept him sharp at a moments notice. Every second in this city was like he was fighting a large, invisible beast. Aclysia was about to berate him again, when they looked at each other and both realized that their behaviour had gotten more damaged by the events than living in the wild and only with each other could have possibly shown.

Rather than continue to fight over these things, they turned to Reysha. “Are you doing fine?” Apexus asked. The tiger girl looked anything but fine. Her caramel skin was half a shade lighter than usual, causing her stripes, particularly those that covered her eyes, to stand out even more.

“I’ll manage,” she assured with a weak smile. “Just a lot of noise…”

After a minute of recuperation, the group got back onto the streets. Primarily, they were looking for someone that sold maps. Not necessarily to buy one, although they would if they could afford it. On the way here, they had earned a little bit extra money, but their total funds barely exceeded two silver coins. They could have barely rented a room for three people with that money, with some reheated grub if they were willing to sleep on straw.

Anyway, even if they couldn’t buy a map, they hoped to at least get some information about the Leaf.

It took them over thirty excruciatingly long minutes, full of barely maintained composure and making themselves as small as possible, to find what they were searching for. A wooden stand, clearly an extension to the blue-painted building behind it, displayed scrolls covered in simple, black ink. It was a shop on the main road. Most of the pieces laying in reach of the customer were simple artwork, lines drawn by a skilled hand depicting basic things that would look good on a wall while being relatively cheap to produce. Among them were a few maps, as detailed as black and white went, of the surrounding areas.

Behind the counter and the owner, a white-haired old gnome with a big, wart covered nose that looked more like a pickle than an actual nose, hung more artistic pieces, completely coloured. They were held at the back so scattered dust didn’t settled on the more valuable pieces. Dust or water, a very real fear even on dry, hot days like this one was, as a public well, complete with metal handle to lower or raise the bucket, was right next to the stand. An added bonus was that any daring thieves, as few as there were in this area, could only grab the basic pieces before running off.

A particular piece at the back caught Apexus’ attention immediately. A map, coloured and pretty detailed, and definitely far out of their price range. It had the name of the Leaf of it, along with several marked locations that Apexus assumed to be dungeons.

“Hello!” the enthusiastic greeting caused Apexus to jump – again. The slime began to hate how everything in this environment set him off. Even more he hated that there was seemingly nothing he could do about it. “Sorry, sorry, didn’t mean to startle y’all,” the gnome raised both ink-stained hands, oddly large for his otherwise tiny body. Even sitting on his extra high stool, which he had needed a small ladder to get on, he only reached up to Apexus’ midriff. “Just saw that you were looking at my work. You like it?”

Apexus stared at the shopkeeper, unable to read the old man properly. ‘Is he after our money? Maybe wants me to take off the mask?’ the slime tilted his head, while more paranoid thoughts ran through his head.

The gnome, in the meanwhile, felt it difficult to keep up the smile and thought, ‘I think I may have been better off ignoring this one.’

A thought that was scattered when Aclysia cleared her throat to get his attention. “Yes, your artistic talent had caught our eye,” the metal fairy put it diplomatically. “Albeit, we are unlikely able to afford any of it.” Barely unable to keep himself from berating her for a change, Apexus focused on standing still. “We are in need of a map of the entire Leaf, if you could show us something cheap, we would be much obliged.”

“Ah, adventurers, I should have known!” the gnome exclaimed and put his hands on the table to get up and vanish underneath the stand. “That explains the intense glare your friend has there. Really intimidating. Is he a Warrior? A Brawler? I would guess Silent Breaker, but if you were that advanced in your Classes, I would guess you wouldn’t hang around some place like this. Is the redhead also with you? She is a looker, tell me if either of you are looking for a husband, my grandsons just can’t seem to find anyone. I’m just joking, of course. Not about the ‘can’t find anyone’ part, they are hopelessly in love with their work. Not that I was any different at their age.” Repeatedly, the rustling of paper underlined his voice, then he suddenly came back up, having already forgotten about his own question. “Here we go, a basic black and white map of Azenia-Ra, five silver.”

“…Any chances we can barter you down to two?” Aclysia asked, only mildly hopeful. It may have been black and white, but the details were all finely drawn and the icons very easy to understand, with roads and landmarks standing out well. The parchment was of good quality, as it had to be to survive repeated folding.

The gnome shook his head. “At that point, I don’t even break even on the materials and time invested,” he stroked his chin. “Down on your luck? It’s rare to meet adventurer’s that don’t even have five silver. I don’t want to inquire too much bu-“

“Then don’t,” Apexus suddenly burst out, his deep voice made only that bit more menacing by the mask. That this map drawing person decided to use his food hole to do this much blabbering, talking as if they were friends, irked the chimeric creature more than a little bit.

“O-oh, sorry, sorry,” the gnome waved in a panic. To him, the slime was an almost two-metre-tall (at that much difference, ten to fifteen centimetres was barely noticeable) giant of a relatively lean build but giant wings that more than made up for it. All that was visible of Apexus’ body were those wings and his pale blue eyes, staring down with slit pupils.

An awkward silence ensued, during which Apexus kept staring down the gnome, the gnome sweating profusely and Aclysia trying to figure out how to solve any of this. Between her beloved reacting in a, somewhat understandably, aggressive fashion and them being out of luck when it came to buying things.

“Ehem,” Aclysia cleared her throat again and the gnome was very happy to turn his attention to her. “Please ignore my darling, he isn’t very familiar with this environment,” she said. “If you could, I would be happy to buy some information instead? We are wondering where to go next.”

“Ah, yes, that will be no problem!” the gnome obliged and climbed back on his stool to gesture at the map. “As you can see Azenia-Ra has a total of seven dungeons with a wide level spread. You should already know Myrlight,” he just stated that as a fact and so Aclysia nodded. She wanted to ask, but feared that would cause the gnome to ask unnecessary questions. “If you go south from here, the wild animal will get a bit stronger. Generally, the animals become more bothersome the further south you go, but they don’t reach something a level seven adventurer shouldn’t be able to handle. We have settlements of humans and dwarves here and…”

While the gnome gave Aclysia and Apexus the rough rundown, Reysha was only concentrating on her breathing. Her eyes were focused on a single point. She wasn’t really looking at anything. Really, she tried her best to not see anything without closing her eyes. If she could have done the same for her ears and nose, then she would have. Her keen senses constantly fed her all of the business-buzzing that went on around them. The singing sound of coins bouncing on wooden surfaces, the squeaking of badly oiled scales, the shouting matches between aggressive barterers and old trade rivals, the friendly chatter between people that only got to see each other on these days, the typical array of a market.

Somehow worse was the smell of dust. After all of the sweet smells of the forest, the dust that rose from the trampled road filled her nostrils with an odd familiarity. In her home, Ragressia, where hot days and desert winds had been normal, it often smelled similar to this. That smell of her birthplace, a home that she had always disliked for many reasons she carried in her own personality, now made her nostalgic at a time she really couldn’t use it.

Violently, she was ripped out of her attempts to not think, when someone bumped into her. At one moment, her mind was forcefully calm, the next her hand closed around something hot.

Suddenly, she stood in that basement again. Her hand was burning, the flesh set aflame and reduced to ash within moments by the life-stealing fire. It burned hot, way too hot, melted her bones and crept up her arms. She was there, she was wide awake and she was screaming.

Apexus had already been walking when he noticed Reysha stumbling, but now he moved as quickly as his liquid body allowed him too. “What is…?” he tried to ask, but Reysha’s eyes were empty and opened wide in terror, as she slumped to the ground and continued to empty her lungs in an intense, pained cry. Only her hand had any sort of tension in it, holding onto the metal handle of the well. It had been exposed to the sun all day and was very hot. Not enough to cause more than a bit of discomfort to a healthy adult person. Reysha did not fit that categorization at the moment.

Realizing that the problem had to do something with that, Apexus pried open her thumb and pulled her away from the well. The moment he did, Reysha’s flashback came to a sudden end. The pain left with it, but terrifying confusion took its place. Crying and quivering, she let herself be embraced by Apexus, who stroked her hair and mumbled whatever calming came to mind. Aclysia, no matter how much she hated the situation, quickly hurried over.

Half the market was looking their direction for a little while. The genuine scream of a woman echoed far and wide over any environment, no matter how busy. A city guard stepped close, inspected the situation for a little while, then shook his head and took it on him to disperse the crowd. “Let’s leave them alone, come on people, don’t you have business to attend to?!” he shouted. Like most guards, he was a former adventurer and had a vast number of ideas what could wreck a person like that.

The gnome waddled over and placed his stool next to the well. “Sit her down,” he said, in a very calm voice. “And get some water out of that well.”

Apexus looked to Aclysia before he followed that advice. Working the handle, he soon brought a bucket of water to the surface. The gnome returned with a piece of cloth and a cup. “Here,” he offered both to Reysha. “Take these.”

“I don’t deserve that,” the tiger girl mumbled.

“It’s not a gift, just drink a cup of water and clean your face,” the gnome stated. “Take them.”

With quivering fingers, Reysha did and kept it to the suggested order. She wasn’t especially thirsty, but feeling something cold run through her greatly helped in other ways. Once she had wiped off her face, she let out small breath with relative relief.

“I don’t want to inquire, but…” the gnome started and this time Apexus only lowered his head and let him talk. “…you seem like adventurers that have seen something you weren’t ready for.”

“Understatement of the millennia,” Reysha mumbled.

The gnome didn’t care for the irony in her voice, only gave her a friendly grandpa smile. Apexus hated that this expression stirred distrust inside his core. “I won’t ask anything else. Just know that there is a summer island where the monsters are weak and the dungeon is only one step above the easiest Safe Leaf ones. We call it Summer Rest, for obvious reasons. It’s a popular retirement place for adventurers. I am not suggesting anything,” the gnome said and raised his hands defensively when he got three pairs of protesting eyes, “but if you want to be somewhere safe, then you should either head there or take the trip up the Leaf to Ctania.”

The trio fell silent, unable to respond.

Mistaking their grief and bad conscious for hesitation, the gnome put on his nicest face and said, “Wait a second,” and walked away into his house. After about a minute, during which they all heavily considered whether they should just run, the shopkeeper returned with a folded map in hand. “Here.”

“We don’t have the money,” Apexus reminded the the gnome, who mockingly blew air out of his nose.

“What do you take me for?” He gestured at his table. “The map I showed you is one of my works, a piece of art that I replicate every other week. That costs you five silver and you don’t have the money for it,” he gestured at the folded map in his hands. “This is a failure my son drew when he was learning the craft. It has water damage and is folded all wrong. I don’t sell failures around here.” He shoved the map into Aclysia’s hands. “So, you’re doing me a favour, really. Just don’t tell anyone I dared to hand something like that out, it would ruin the reputation of my shop!”

With that, he took the cloth and the cup and headed back into his home. For some reason, after all of that, the trio had a very easy time standing up and leaving. They only did three things before hurriedly getting out of the city. They took a look at the failure of a map they had been given. They put the stool of the shopkeeper back where it belonged.

And they put all the money they could quickly find in the adventurer’s bags on the seat.